How to add/change GPS coordinates to photos

[Velmonte]

Hello everyone,

I'm tasked with adding gps coordinates to 1000+ photos for a summer project. I just started using exiftool today, and I'm currently inexperienced with command line programming. I have my photos, an excel sheet with the gps info, and a .kmz file showing the locations on Google Earth. I'm assuming that exiftool is functional in my command line since the command "C:\Users\Me>exiftool" displays the application information.

After some of my own research, I found the command "exiftool -gpslatitude+=VALUE -gpslongitude+=VALUE FILE" for modifying gps data, but it isn't finding the files I specify. Is there a particular location that my photos need to be in? Or do I need to change the directory?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[StarGeek]

Your basic command would be (no plus signs, those aren't used with Coordinates)
exiftool -GPSLatitude=40.6892 -GPSLatitudeRef=N -GPSLongitude=-74.0445 -GPSLongitudeRef=W -GPSAltitude=10 -GPSAltitudeRef="Above Sea Level" FILE

There are two tags for each coordinate that needs to be set because EXIF holds the GPS number and direction separately.

But exiftool is very flexible and the inputs can just be numbers, which can be useful with scripts
exiftool -GPSLatitude=40.6892 -GPSLatitudeRef=40.6892 -GPSLongitude=-74.0445 -GPSLongitudeRef=-74.0445 -GPSAltitude=10 -GPSAltitudeRef=10 FILE

And even better, you can condense this by using wildcards
exiftool -GPSLatitude*=40.6892 -GPSLongitude*=-74.0445 -GPSAltitude*=10 FILE

But since you have a Excel file and a KMZ track, you can add data in bulk.

In the case of the Excel file, you would need to alter it to a specific format.  First, the very first column needs to be named "SourceFile" and it needs to have the paths to the file.  This can either be the full path to the files e.g. C:\Users\Velmonte\Desktop\photos\file.jpg, or relative to the Current Directory that you are running the command from.  So if the CD was C:\Users\Velmonte\Desktop\, then the "SourceFile" would have to be .\photos\file.jpg

Next, you'll need 2 columns for each coordinate.  For this you can usually just duplicate the columns you already have.  The columns would need a header line of GPSLatitude, GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSLongitudeRef, and optionally, GPSAltitude and GPSAltitudeRef.

Then you would save it as a CSV file.  Make sure and choose the comma as the separator, because it can default to a semicolon depening upon the location the computer is set to.  The file would look something like this
SourceFile,GPSLatitude,GPSLatitudeRef,GPSLongitude,GPSLongitudeRef,GPSAltitude,GPSAltitudeRef
y:/!temp/Test4.jpg,40.6892,40.6892,-74.0445,-74.0445,10,10

Finally, you would run
exiftool -csv=/path/to/List.csv C:\Users\Velmonte\Desktop\photos

Details for this process can be found under the -csv option and FAQ #26.

For the KMZ file, it's a bit more complicated.  I believe that would be a KML file that's zipped, so you would have to extract the files.  And I faintly recall that some KML files are structured poorly when it comes to the timing data.  But the basic command would be
exiftool -geotag /path/to/file.kml C:\Users\Velmonte\Desktop\photos

This command makes the assumption that the images have a correct DateTimeOriginal tag and are in the computer's local timezone.  If this doesn't work, the most common problem is that the time needs to be shifted to UTC.  this can be done with GeoSync (this shifts the time 7 hours in the case of my -07:00 time zone)
exiftool -geotag /path/to/file.kml -GeoSync=+7:0:0 C:\Users\Velmonte\Desktop\photos
or Geotime to specify the tag to use
exiftool -geotag /path/to/file.kml "-Geotime<${DateTimeOriginal}-07:00" C:\Users\Velmonte\Desktop\photos

See the Geotagging with ExifTool page for more details.

Finally I would also suggest trying hvdwolf's jExifToolGUI for a GUI in the case of the KML file.